Under fire for its response to allegations of theft and fraud at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of California is facing new scrutiny over charges that an employee at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was fired in 1999 after she told her superiors of mismanagement of federal funds at the university-run weapons lab.

In a letter to the Energy Department's inspector general, Markey said: "These allegations, if true, would indicate that the recent disclosures at Los Alamos National Laboratory may represent just the tip of the iceberg of mismanagement, retaliation against whistle-blowers and other illegal activities that appear to be both tolerated and enabled by the laboratories, the University of California and the Department of Energy."

LAB'S RESPONSE

Livermore officials, however, disputed Doggett's account that she was retaliated against for raising questions about mismanagement.

In fact, a Livermore spokeswoman said Doggett had been asked in 2000 -- a year after she was fired -- to come back to work at the lab in a different division, but that she had refused the new assignment.

The questions raised Friday come as UC is threatened with losing its 60- year role as manager of the nation's nuclear weapons labs because of the earlier allegations at Los Alamos.

Markey's concerns about potential mismanagement and the treatment of those who uncover potential wrongdoing at Livermore are strikingly similar to those UC has confronted the past few months at Los Alamos.

Last week, UC rehired two former police officers who were fired in late November as Los Alamos security officials after discovering millions of dollars in credit card abuse, purchasing irregularities and other potential financial problems at the nation's premier nuclear weapons lab.

The charges at Los Alamos have spurred internal Department of Energy reviews as well as investigations by the FBI and the House of Representatives.

The chairman of the House panel leading the probe, Rep. James Greenwood, R- Pa., challenged UC to improve its work if the university intends to maintain its contract to manage the lab.

Greenwood, in an interview with The Chronicle, said he met Friday with the new interim director of Los Alamos, George "Pete" Nanos, and told him, "You've got some of the smartest people in the world working here. You can figure out how to make nuclear weapons. . . . You should be able to figure out to keep people from stealing taxpayer dollars."

In Washington on Friday, Markey raised Doggett's case to illustrate what he said appeared to be a pattern of retribution against employees who speak out about problems at the labs.

Doggett, who worked at Livermore for 11 years, had kept quiet for years about her allegations of fraud and mismanagement, but decided to go public this week after hearing that Robert Kuckuck, who was an associate lab director in Livermore, had been asked to help UC fix the problems at Livermore and Los Alamos labs.

"That was probably the straw that broke my back," Doggett told The Chronicle in an interview.

Doggett said Friday that Kuckuck had not taken her complaints seriously when she raised them in the mid-1990s and had done nothing when she was retaliated against and fired.

Doggett, who was hired in 1988 and eventually promoted to senior resource manager at the lab, oversaw contracts to make sure that money was being spent legally and properly.

"I'd see things that would raise questions," she said. "They reached a point where there were so many of them that we took them in bulk to management. "

QUESTIONS ON CONTRACTS

Doggett would not say who had gone to management with her, because that person still works at the lab. She said questionable contracts of at least several hundred thousand dollars seemed to be misspent. She was most surprised that no one took her complaints seriously.

"I was more appalled that as I went through the chain of management nobody else said, 'Gosh, let's fix this right here and now,' " Doggett said.

Susan Houghton, a spokeswoman for Livermore lab, said the amount of misappropriated money was not as high as Doggett alleges, but there were discrepancies of $40,000, and the lab returned $32,000 to the Energy Department in 1998.

"We certainly disagree that a retaliation or wrongful termination occurred, " Houghton said. "We took her allegations very seriously. We immediately launched an investigation. We found . . . there was some inappropriate charging of accounts."